Use case:
I have several decks which i have not reviewed for an extended period of time. There are many cards in there that i remember ; but many that i have forgotten - so i do not want to reset intervals entirely. Since the info in that deck is not in review i have to essentially “relearn” it. But the trouble then is that in order to relearn a topic i have to see the cards in the order progression of that topic (from basic concept cards to advanced concepts cards) for that info to make sense ; however anki reviewer presents the cards in a randomized order for review. I have a field in the cards for the page numbers of the book from which i got that information ; if i can reposition review-cards in the review-queue then i can review it in that order, essentially relearning the topic in that deck starting from the basics of that topic. And if i recall the easy cards i can mark them as good and mark only the difficult ones that i forgot as again.
I think this use case is pretty typical after one has used anki as a tool to store information about too many subjects… it is natural that certain decks could fall out of being reviewed maybe because the topic in that deck is not as relevant to the current field of study of the user(eg. maybe user is a student who already passed the exam that tests that topic and deck).
TLDR: allowing repositioning review cards will allow anki to act as tool to “relearn” older partially-forgotten topics and not just for “recalling” topics that are already mostly in memory.
I don’t understand your suggestion… What I essentially want to do is to change the order in which review-cards appear while reviewing - using the set due date option after selecting a set of cards only allows them to be moved to a certain date for review - but the order in which they are presented to me when reviewing would still remain the same.
You can roughly order them by making some of the cards due on future days. If you need precise control over the order, then you’re probably better off resetting them to new, maybe after a quick pass to see if you remember anything.
@dae@Dolphyn Thank you for replying… But I honestly think there is a need to allow users a way to review cards in a custom order. That resetting cards to new cards just to see cards in order is not always practical.
I am confused about the workflow to use with anki when learning complicated STEM subjects…
When you keep learning and transcode all that information as Anki cards it is easy to accumulate a lot of anki cards. ( Say if there is 5 days of college classes per week then it should be typical to generate at least 50 good cards each day 5 days a week for several years continuously.) That’s a lot of cards, but not all of those topics are relevant to the current semester of studies. It should almost impossible to have enough time to keep all of these cards in review if they are cards about complicated STEM topics (please correct me if I am wrong). So certain decks of cards will not be reviewed regularly.
But the good thing about complicated STEM subjects is that topics are all inter-connected - although you haven’t been reviewing a deck, it is likely that you still remember the most basic concepts for that topic and once you review some cards corresponding to the basics of the topic you remember even more of it.
I think this is typical of STEM subjects where topics are inevitably interconnected to a good extend. So it is impractical to reset these decks every time, instead , what you want is a way to review cards in a custom order that makes sense so that you ‘relearn’ topic.
Also, if one uses anki to make cards about everything they learn then anki is not just a flashcard program for them, it is effectively a knowledge repository. The only thing that keeps anki from acting as an effective knowledge repository is that it does not emphasize ways to keep cards and see cards, in an order that makes sense.
I am curious about hearing your thoughts on the problems that I described.
Anki’s design assumes you will input cards that do not depend on any particular order after you have initially learned them. You may be able to approximate initial introduction order by using a filtered deck sorted by added date, if the cards were originally added in the desired order.
I understand that it would be ideal if it were possible to cleanly divide content into independent cards; in fact, making cards as independent as possible is , AFAIK, key to making good flashcards. But it is a simple fact that many subjects have interconnected elements - concepts that are pre-requisite to other concepts. So truly independent cards is a mere ideality that it is never actually possible in many subjects.
Sure there are subjects where truly independent cards can be made - I have no trouble with my “vocabulary” deck, for example. But putting such a hardwired limit into the software itself for there being no way to review cards in the innate order that makes sense in the subject severely limits the subjects for which anki can be used practically.
Of course if all cards are already mostly in memory then it shouldn’t matter in what order the cards are presented - but there are use cases when it is impractical to have all cards in regular review - that I have explained the previous comments.
Kindly reconsider the overly restrictive design choice of letting users have no way to review cards in order - allowing filtered decks to order cards by a custom sort-field or allowing to reposition all cards in a specific order after sorting from the browser are non-intrusive ways to allow users the freedom to use anki however they wish to without affecting the “default” functioning of anki. AFAIK, I think this wouldn’t be too difficult to implement either.